Meta files patent for facial recognition, automatic recording of people

Meta has filed for a patent that includes a "memory recall" system. The system will appear to detect people via facial recognition, record them automatically, and show the user highlights later. Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses have garnered a reputation as "pervert" glasses, with many reports of them being used to record people surreptitiously using the onboard camera. Meta has now released updates trying to disable the camera when the light doesn't work or is covered.

Meta explain how it works in a press release -

“Each pair of our AI glasses has a white light called a capture LED that blinks to signify when content is being captured for your gallery — covering or disabling this capture LED automatically disables the camera. While mobile phones and action cameras don’t have this on their cameras, ours have had them since day one.”

The system could then analyze facial expressions. If two people start laughing, for example, the glasses could recognize that reaction and reposition the camera to focus on them.

Who makes the final cut may depend on the wearer’s relationship with each person. According to the report, information from a user’s social graph could help the system determine which friends or family members are likely to be more interesting to them than other people in the room.

The patent mentions eye-gaze data too. Looking at a particular person or object could help the glasses determine where to focus, while stabilization and automatic cropping could improve the resulting photo or video.

The wearer may still need to give a command before taking a picture or recording a clip in some of the examples described. The larger system, however, would handle much of the decision-making: identifying people, interpreting what they’re doing and sorting the results into a personalized collection.